Keyword: shale

“Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.” – PJ O’Rourke The new OPEC deal to cut oil output – the cartel’s first since 2008 – amounts to nothing less than Saudi Arabia’s surrender to the power of American shale. It has come about due to Riyadh’s belated, horrified understanding that it has utterly lost control over the energy market, running through its capital reserves in the process. Rather than young, feckless Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman using Saudi Arabia’s John D Rockefeller strategy to permanently drive U.S. shale out of the energy market, the exact opposite result has...

Don’t look now, but an American shale rebound is already underway. Operators have been steadily putting more oil rigs into operation for months now, and we’ve been seeing signs that the industry has been ready to stop a slide in output and start ramping up total U.S. production for months now. This week, as Reuters reports, the U.S. saw its rig count rise yet again.

Smart energy policy could give the next President his best prospect for spurring growth in manufacturing jobs—and thus delivering on the promises his voters think matter most. Pundits are terrible at predicting presidencies; remember the hymns to the greatness of the Second Lincoln, the New Roosevelt, and the Democratic Reagan that wafted to the heavens during the Obama transition. And the pundits were even worse at predicting Trump’s fate during the election; how many times did they predict his demise? But now, as convinced as ever of his incompetence and their infallibility, the punditocracy is telling us why the Trump...

Tuesday the U.S. Geological Survey announced the largest ever assessment of â€ścontinuous oilâ€ť ever made in the United States. The Wolfcamp shale in the area of Midland, Texas is estimated to contain three times the oil and gas of the Bakken shale formation in Montana and North Dakota. From the USGS: The Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin portion of TexasÂ’ Permian Basin province contains an estimated mean of 20 billion barrels of oil, 16 trillion cubic feet of associated natural gas, and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey. This...

A vast field of shale rock in West Texas could yield 20 billion barrels of oil, making it the largest source of shale oil the U.S. Geological Survey has ever assessed, agency officials said. The Wolfcamp Shale geologic formation in the Midland area also contains an estimated 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, the agency said in a release. The discovery is nearly three times larger than the shale oil found in 2013 in the Bakken and Three Forks formations in the Dakotas and Montana, said Chris Schenk, a Denver-based research...

CARLSBAD — Oil experts say America is under attack by Saudi Arabia and OPEC, but instead of bombs, the OPEC oil cartel is dropping millions of barrels of oil on the U.S. economy in a clear effort to undermine the nation’s oil producers and kill any chance of American energy independence. The first to feel the flood of foreign oil into the U.S. are the independent oil producers, whose stripper wells in Texas alone account for 20 percent of the nation’s oil and gas production, said Judy Stark, executive vice president of the The Panhandle Producers & Royalty Owners Association.

“Right now, it’s all about the frack sand. The story of US shale resilience is now about huge quantities of high-quality frack sand. This is the backbone of the comeback.” Welcome to the Mega-Frack Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting highly pressurized water into a well and then pouring sand into it in order to keep the tiny fractures created by the water blast open, and then widening them so that more crude oozes from the shale rock. The US response to the oil price war has been the ‘mega frack’, which means that producers are creating more fractures in rock because...

Apache’s recent oil find highlights what could be a new phase in fracking. To date, fracking in the U.S. had really been all about taking explored basins and drilling new wells to get at previously untapped resources. That strategy worked well when oil prices were more than $80 a barrel. At today’s prices though, drilling the old style rigs in mostly depleted fields to get at residual layers of black gold is a money losing strategy. Apache’s find shows that money can be made by taking risks and looking for major new finds in areas that had been passed over...

An overlooked corner of West Texas is believed to contain billions of barrels of newly-discovered shale oil. Apache (APA) revealed the huge find this week after more than two years of stealthily buying up land, extensive geological research and rigorous testing. ... Apache believes the new shale play spans at least five formations, contains over three billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of rich natural gas.

The Saudis counted them out. So did the Russians, even many domestic analysts said North American shale and tight oil and gas production would decline in the face of low prices and that investment would dry up and output would fall. Well, guess what? They have all been proven wrong. Sure, rig counts have dropped and there have been painful layoffs of workers, but the industry is surviving and against all the “experts” advice, production of natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shales of the U.S. Northeast is averaging 22.63 billion cubic feet per day in August,

The collapse of oil prices has killed off any appetite that the oil industry had for megaprojects that cost tens of billions of dollars. With scarce resources, oil companies have shifted their focus, pouring resources into short-cycle projects, which often means shale drilling. Liam Denning over at Bloomberg Gadfly put some numbers to the phenomenon, using data from Oslo-based Rystad Energy. The data is revealing, painting a portrait of an industry that has scaled down the size of new oil projects. Intriguingly, the focus on smaller oil fields began before the plunge in oil prices, although the price crash is...

Fracking is once again becoming a hot topic in the oil and gas world., with Germany moving Tuesday to impose an indefinite ban on the unconventional drilling technique. But in the U.S. this week the story was the opposite. Oil and gas drillers won a critical legal victory over the future of fracking in America’s shale plays. That came in Wyoming, where a District Judge struck down a set of tougher rules on fracking that had been implemented by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) early last year. Last March, the BLM came down hard on the U.S. shale...

Three days ago, Pioneer surprised oil market watchers when it not only said that it has already produced more oil than it had initially forecast, but that once crude returns to $50, all systems are go. This is what it said in its Q1 press release: producing 222 thousand barrels oil equivalent per day (MBOEPD), of which 55% was oil; production grew by 7 MBOEPD, or 3%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2015, and was significantly above Pioneer’s first quarter production guidance range of 211 MBOEPD to 216 MBOEPD; oil production grew 10 thousand barrels oil per day during...

In recent years, proponents of clean energy have taken heart in the falling prices of solar and wind power, hoping they will drive an energy revolution. But a new study co-authored by an MIT professor suggests otherwise: Technology-driven cost reductions in fossil fuels will lead us to continue using all the oil, gas, and coal we can, unless governments pass new taxes on carbon emissions. “If we don’t adopt new policies, we’re not going to be leaving fossil fuels in the ground,” says Christopher Knittel, an energy economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “We need both a policy...

The major beneficiary of the 54 percent jump in oil prices from the lows of $26 per barrel is the U.S. shale oil industry, which will utilize this rise to ramp up production and repair balance sheets. But any move above $45 per barrel will likely reverse all this good luck: The drop in production will halt and more will be added to the supply glut. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword.

When it comes to shale-oil regions in the United States, not all of them are created equal. Oil production in the Permian Basin, which spans from western Texas to southeastern New Mexico, has been much more resilient in the face of the near-65% drop in oil prices CLJ6, -0.18% since mid-2014 than other shale regions, according to Charles Perry, chief executive officer of energy-consulting firm Perry Management. “Not all shale production is the same and production in most shale areas has fallen since 2014,” he said. But the Permian Basin has grown to be the “most prolific oil-producing area” in...

Saudi Arabia has ruled out a deal by major producers to cut oil output and warned high-cost operators such as US shale drillers to trim costs or go bust in a stark message that triggered fresh pressure on crude prices. Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said a lack of trust between the world's biggest producers meant a cut in production "is not going to happen". He said the kingdom would instead push for a co-ordinated production freeze to help balance a market swamped with an excess of crude which has taken oil prices to their lowest level in more than...

OPEC recognizes role of shale. El-Badri largely admitted OPECâ€™s waning influence due to the rise of U.S. shale. "Shale oil in the United States, I donâ€™t know how we are going to live together," he said in Houston on Feb. 22. â€śAny increase in price, shale will come immediately and cover any reduction.â€ť The IEAâ€™s report mostly backed up that sentiment. Although the Paris-based energy agency predicted shale would decline substantially in 2016 and 2017, the IEA also said that shale would bring back 1.3 mb/d of liquids production by the end of the decade. Low prices now, but high...

An OPEC production cut is unlikely until U.S. production declines by about another million barrels per day (mmbpd). OPEC wonâ€™t cut because it would accomplish nothing beyond a short-term increase in price. Carefully placed comments by OPEC and Russian oil ministers about the possibility of production cuts achieve almost the same price increase as an actual cut.

So, without further ado here are 25 deeply distressed companies, whose banks we found have quietly shrunk the borrowing base of their credit facilities anywhere from 6 percent in the case of Black Ridge Oil and Gas to a whopping 51 percent for soon to be insolvent New Source Energy Partners. [Link to chart here.]

"...Daniel Yergin, founder of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said it is impossible for OPEC to knock out the US shale industry though a war of attrition even if large numbers of frackers fall by the wayside over coming months. Mr Yergin said groups with deep pockets such as Blackstone and Carlyle will take over the infrastructure when the distressed assets are cheap enough, and bide their time until the oil cycle turns. "The management may change and the companies may change but the resources will still be there," he told the Daily Telegraph. "It takes $10bn and five to...

Crude oil production in February from seven major US shale plays is expected to fall 116,000 b/d to 4.83 million b/d, according to the US Energy Information Administrationâ€™s latest Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The agency last month also projected a 116,000-b/d loss for January (OGJ Online, Dec. 7, 2015). The DPR focuses on the Bakken, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Marcellus, Niobrara, Permian, and Utica, which altogether accounted for 95% of US crude oil production increases and all US natural gas production increases during 2011-13. Production from the Eagle Ford is seen dropping 72,000 b/d during the month to 1.15 million b/d,...

U.S. shale oil production is expected to fall for a seventh month in a row in February, declining at about the same rate as the month before as drillers manage to eke out a few more barrels from each new well, U.S. data showed on Monday. Total output was set to decline by 116,000 bpd to 4.8 million bpd in February compared with January, a U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA) drilling productivity report said. Production was estimated to have fallen by about the same margin in January, despite some expectations that the decline rate would begin to quicken as companies...

As crude prices languish below $40 a barrel, American drillers are retreating from domestic oil fields even faster than in the tumultuous 1980s oil bust. U.S. oil companies are set to curb investments by 24 percent this year to $89.6 billion, meaning that from the beginning of last year to the end of this year, domestic drillers will have cut their annual capital budgets by 51 percent. That's more than the industry's 46 percent cut in the mid-1980s, according to Cowen & Co., which began its oil-company spending survey in 1982. But the oil field exodus will eventually pay off....

The OPEC 2015 World Oil Outlook came out a few days ago. They basically produce two outlooks, a medium term outlook to 2020 and a long term outlook to 2040. I found their medium term outlook pessimistic in some cases too optimistic in others. But I found their long term outlook to be wildly optimisticâ€¦ in most cases. In all cases below I chart crude when it is available and â€śliquidsâ€ť only when no other option is available. The data is in million barrels per day.

EIA continues to expand its assessment of technically recoverable shale oil and shale natural gas resources around the world. The addition of four countries--Chad, Kazakhstan, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)--to a previous assessment covering 42 countries has resulted in a 13% increase in the global assessed total resource estimate for shale oil and a 4% increase for shale gas. A total of 26 formations within 11 basins were analyzed in these 4 countries. Although these formations contain significant volumes of technically recoverable resources, there is currently no shale exploration underway in any of the four countries, meaning the...

U.S. shale oil production is expected to fall by more than 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) in January from the March peak, according to a U.S. government forecast on Monday, on the back of a global glut that's slashed oil prices to a near seven-year low. Total output is set to decline by just over 115,000 bpd to 4.86 million bpd in January compared with December, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's drilling productivity report. Bakken production from North Dakota is set to fall 27,000 bpd, while production from the Eagle Ford is expected to fall 77,000 bpd. In...

Panelists at Business First's second annual New Mexico Energy Outlook Summit yesterday offered but one common ground: Something needs to be done to turn the industry around. SPONSORED BY PEOPLE ON THE MOVE Tanja Jenkins Tanja Jenkins Boys & Girls Clubs of Central New Mexico Andrew G. Schultz Andrew G. Schultz City of Albuquerque Board of Ethics and Campaign Practices SPONSORTony Royle, CPA Tony Royle, CPA Moss Adams See More People on the Move Emceed by ABF publisher Candace Beeke, the event brought together Dr. Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy at New Mexico...

The Jacki Daily Show Radical Environmentalist are Anti Humanist - 11/8/15 Jacki starts the show interviewing Gifford Briggs, vice president and chief lobbyist of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association (LOGA), which represents the independent and service sectors of the stateâ€™s oil and gas industry. Jacki is joined by Rob Henneke of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to discuss the upcoming At the Crossroads: Energy & Climate Policy Summit on November 19th 2015 Jacki is also joined by Robert Zubrin, author of" Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism"

When President Obama announced he was killing the Keystone XL pipeline, he said he was agreeing with the State Departmentâ€™s assessment that the pipeline from Canada â€śwould not serve the national interests of the United States.â€ť The fact is that it would not have benefitted the personal financial interests of friend and economic mentor, Warren Buffett, who can rest assured that oil from Canada and the nearby Bakken formation in North Dakota will continue to be transported by a railroad he owns. As Investorâ€™s Business Daily noted in a 2011 editorial: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of...

Itâ€™s time to talk seriously about the energy industry in New Mexico. And you have some work to do. Whether your business is directly involved in this industry, itâ€™s very much tied to its outcomes â€” and right now, thereâ€™s much concern about that in the state. After all, some 30 percent of New Mexicoâ€™s tax base comes from oil and gas. And youâ€™ve read the headlines weâ€™ve been reporting on how that sector is faring. If you havenâ€™t, let me recap â€” itâ€™s a fracking mess. The price of oil dropping more than a year ago has resulted in...

THE JACKI DAILY Show! Listen live at 2PM Eastern! The host of the Jacki Daily show has had an impressive career in energy, law, and politics.Most recently, Jacki served as General Counsel to an engineering firm specializing in energy, national security and environmental cleanup. Previously, she served many years as legal counsel on Capitol Hill to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and the former Ranking Member of the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, advising on the oversight of federal agencies. Prior to her career in Washington, she worked as a corporate litigator, and as an Assistant Vice...

Like a puddle of spilled water on a Midland street in August, money is evaporating out of the oil patch. Six companies alone will likely write off more than $60 billion from their balance sheets because the value of their oil and natural gas reserves have plummeted, according to a forward-looking story by the Chronicle's Collin Eaton. Looking at the industry as a whole, including private companies that are not required to reveal their finances, hundreds of billions of investors' dollars could disappear. The number of oil and gas companies declaring bankruptcy continues to rise, which means even more losses...

New Mexicoâ€™s oil and gas industry may be in the doldrums now, but state and economic development officials are laying the groundwork for a rapid comeback when markets improve. Gov. Susana Martinez released a new energy plan for New Mexico in September that calls for broad infrastructure development in the stateâ€™s Permian Basin in the southeast and the San Juan Basin in the northwest to facilitate oil and gas development. That includes road improvements, new pipelines to transport crude and natural gas, and possibly a new 100-mile rail line running from Interstate 40 in Gallup to Farmington. It also calls...

nery in Artesia. (Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal) By Kevin Robinson-Avila / Journal Staff Writer Published: Monday, October 26th, 2015 at 12:02am Updated: Monday, October 26th, 2015 at 10:52am Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect time frame in a quote from Dan Fine about when prices might dip into the $23 to $28 per barrel range. The quote has been corrected to show that projection for late 2017. New Mexico’s oil and gas industry is bracing for another round of volatile ups and downs in crude prices that could push the market – and ultimately production...

Join Albuquerque Business First for the 2nd Annual New Mexico Energy Outlook Summit. This Summit will offer business leaders unique access to energy insights that will affect your company in the year to come. When: Thursday, November 12, 2015, 7:30am-9:30am Add to my calendar Where: Sandia Resort & Casino: Ballrooms A&B Albuquerque NM

The Importance of Stability in Energy Production Regions 7/27/15 On this week's Jacki Daily Show, Jacki speaks with Gal Luft of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. She speaks to Phil Fishman, author of A Really Inconvenient Truth. Also Jacki speaks with Ed Ireland, PhD and leading expert on Barnett Shale issues. Dr. Gal Luft is co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) a Washington based think tank focused on energy security, and a senior adviser to the United States Energy Security Council, a cabinet level exta governmental advisory committee. He is also...

Alex Epstein gives an overview of his book, “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” and brings his Philosophy expertise to break down the Marxist, human-hostile underpinnings of the fringe Green movement. Best of the Jacki Daily Show. Interviews include Alex Epstein, Author of the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and Jim Amos, Chairman of Proctor & Gamble's Franchising Division

In Part I, General Jones and Jacki discuss a view of the world as comprised of “energy haves” and “energy have-nots,” energy scarcity as a weapon of war, and what it means for the U.S. to take leadership as the top energy producer. In Part II, General Jones and Jacki discuss the strategic benefits of the Keystone Pipeline, and efforts by foreign energy producers to fund activism against U.S. and European energy production. Finally, the General answers the question: ISIS in Iraq; What’s energy got to do with it?

On September 30, a federal judge struck down the U.S. Department of Interior’s regulations on hydraulic fracturing, a blow to the Obama administration’s efforts at putting standards on the drilling practice. A U.S. District Judge in Wyoming issued an injunction against the implementation of Interior’s rules. In March 2015, the Bureau of Land Management (part of the Interior Department) issued its final rule for fracking on public lands. According to BLM, there are over 100,000 oil and gas wells on federal lands, over 90 percent of which use fracking. “Current federal well-drilling regulations are more than 30 years old and...

Stiff competition, lack of business lead to bankruptcies, distress ___ A wave of bankruptcies and closures is sweeping across the oil patch, with dozens of hydraulic-fracturing companies at risk, industry experts say. Most of the companies that help oil-and-gas explorers drill and frack wells are small, privately owned and just a few years old. They are part of a flood of new entrants in the energy business—one that is drying up as oil prices languish below $50 a barrel. One of the latest casualties is Pro-Stim Services. Launched in 2011 with backing from Turnbridge Capital LLC, a private-equity firm, the...

Argentina has often been held up as the next most likely location for a shale revolution, with some of the largest shale oil and gas reserves in the world. Argentina could hold more than 800 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, more than the U.S., and second only to China, according to the EIA. Its shale oil resources, at 27 billion barrels, are also significant. If Argentina is to succeed in developing its shale resources, the Vaca Muerta is where it will happen. The shale basin in central Argentina has been one of the most watched shale basins outside of...

Decreases in the cost to drill shale gas wells and continued investment into domestic production have allowed China to increase its development of shale gas. Although reliance on natural gas imports has increased in the Chinese energy market, future shale gas production in China would help to meet natural gas demand as the country faces difficulties in developing other natural gas resources, including coalbed methane (CBM). Over the past 25 years, China has attempted to develop its substantial CBM resources, estimated by China's Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) at more than 1,000 trillion cubic feet (Tcf). Currently, there are...

The flow of crude from what had been the country’s fastest-growing oil and gas regions, like Texas’ Eagle Ford shale, is declining rapidly, according to new data released by the federal government this week. The Energy Information Administration reports that across the country’s seven largest shale deposits oil production is expected to fall to 5.2 million barrels a day next month, the sixth consecutive month of decline and a six percent drop since April. The fall marks a dramatic turnaround for a U.S. oil industry that had almost doubled its production since 2010. Through the use of advanced hydraulic fracturing...

As oil prices continue to stay low, conjecture on whether or not the US could be given the title of the world’s new swing producer continues to gain traction. There are fierce arguments on both sides fanned by recently published data and the hitherto stubborn oil supply glut. August 2015 became the first month for which the Energy Information Administration published production data using its new survey based method. As a result of the move, US oil production for January to May was revised down by 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) on average. The EIA’s revised data now suggests production...

Natural gas production across all major shale regions in EIA's Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) is projected to decrease for the first time in September. Production from these seven shale regions reached a high in May at 45.6 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) and is expected to decline to 44.9 Bcf/d in September. In each region, production from new wells is not large enough to offset production declines from existing, legacy wells. The DPR provides a month-ahead forecast of natural gas and crude oil production for the seven most significant shale formations in the United States. In order to estimate...